Once China got off drugs: the link between opium and ‘liberal strongman’ Macron

The link between Chinese opium money and rich Western families and monarchies (Astor, Forbes, Kerry, Delano, Roosevelt, etc.) is already well-known, though it’s not publicised enough in the Mainstream Media.

What is even less publicised is how in 2018 the drug trade creates a country – Columbia, Mexico, even Afghanistan, certainly the United States, etc. – which becomes so socially, culturally, financially and politically dysfunctional that the current neoliberal ideal of being anti-government starts to appear…rather sensible.

And thus, neoliberalism wins converts among the 99% who should bepromoting socialism, with its insistence on significant government control to promote their needs over those of the 1%.

The era 1841-1949 is called the “Century of Humiliation” by the Chinese, but Western histories call it the “Treaty Century”, the treaty primarily being the forcing in of Indian opium. Therefore, a far more accurate term would be the “Drug Treaty Century”…but that wouldn’t be effective Western capitalist propaganda, would it?

What’s interesting about China’s opium wars is how very, very modern they are – China’s forced drugging was not a millennium ago, but during the birth and installation of our modern political era.

Therefore, aside from birthing modern fortunes, drugs also birthed modern ideologies.

In a sense this article is a bit of a digression in this 8-part series, but it is in many ways the most practical: We can quite clearly chart how in 19th century China drug money fostered a nouveaux riche which in three generations (a generation being roughly 33 years) became the key driving force behind the armed obstruction of China’s socialist and democratic reforms after World War I.

This article goes into much greater detail sociological detail, but here’s a brief description:

We can all agree that China during that century – whatever you may term it – was exactly like a country today in Françafrique, or one of the banana republics of the US: it was an unpopular regime controlling a divided country; foreigners controlled the key areas (the capital, the ports & railroads, the mines and other sources of natural resources); petty tyrants were recruited in order to control the local population in “flyover country”; the governing ideology was Western ideals mixed heartily with the practice of realpolitik and pitched at an absolute cultural war with the local historical ethical system.

If this sounds undesirable…then you are in agreement with the constantly-rebelling Chinese of this era.

But if we dispense with the racist, chauvinistic notion that the Chinese somehow deserved all that because they were “incapable” of “modernising” due to “backwards” or “unscientific” ideas (feel free to insert your own preferred nonsense here), then we are freed up to realize: Drugs were the grease which powered this society-undoing machine.

It’s interesting to recall that drug money was not a factor in the 1917 Russian Revolution – so when they toppled their imperial monarchy, socialism was immediately installed. China was not so lucky. This article examines the political consequences of this historical difference, and it concludes that the “Drug Treaty Century” created a new “druglord bourgeoise” which created obstacles that required a much longer march to socialism than in Russia.

But, more interestingly (I think) is how this article also shows how 19th century China proves that the drug trade can create a social situation so dysfunctional that all governments appear inherently ineffective, producing a situation where everyone in the 1% and the 99% is led to believe that the ideals of big-government democratic socialism are just a recipe for guaranteed social incompetence.

This drug-fuelled incompetence occurred in China a century ago, and it produced the ideological forerunner of neoliberalism; this drug-fuelled incompetence occurs in many nations today, and it produces modern neoliberalism.

But there’s a reason they call it “dope”, dope.

The drug trade: A simple Western recipe for nation-destroying

Drugs are not good, and we all know this. The ability of Westerners to get nearly 100 million Chinese people – 1 out of every 4 – on opium in the 19th century was…not good. (I take that estimate from the incomparably valuable new tome on Chinese history, China is Communist, Dammit! by Jeff J. Brown.)

Understatements aside, is there any product which is more superbly capitalist than drugs? There is no regulation, competition is cutthroat without limitation, and the profit margins are in the hundreds of percent – it’s better than arms dealing.

But it is no overstatement to say that it is profoundly shocking to list the macro-level, societally-destabilising consequences drugs had in 19th century China, and which occurred in just a single generation:

Drug money increased the resources and thus the success of foreign warlords (foreign imperialists). Of course, they were the first ones to profit, as they were the “first movers” in the Chinese drug business. Drug funding allowed the English and French warlords in East Asia to occupy Beijing in 1860. They installed the totally ineffective Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled for almost 60 years (1861-1908), and they “forced open” (invaded and occupied ports and railroad towns) China to “modernity”.

Because drugs are so much more profitable than anything else, the drug trade also created the resources to pay for establishing overly-powerful regional Chinese leaders (warlords), who reduced the power of the central government.

These warlords, to protect the power they took from the central authority, created their own armies and the professionalized the military class, elevating it as never before in Chinese history.

Opium is still trade, even if it is opium, and it necessarily requires mid-level merchants: this meant the rise of a bourgeois gentry as never before in China. Merchants and soldiers composed the bottom two rungs on their classical Confucian hierarchy (and soldiers are not even officially granted the status of the bottom rung). This is the opposite of Western society, and we see how Westerners upended Chinese culture upon their very first contact.

Drugs exacerbated the pernicious rural-urban divide: Increased money for “traders” meant the ability to buy more land and become even richer, which meant the ability to move to the cities and run your affairs from far away via a local bully, which dissolved the ancient, much-needed bond between landlord and tenant. This may have been the deepest socio-economic effect.

Drugs provide cheap spirituality, and dangerous religious cults sprouted up. Christianity was introduced, but for every 1 Chinese person converted 40 more became addicted to opium (not just consumers). Hardly a moral proselytisation to an Abrahamic faith….

Concurrent with all of this, and also amazingly clear, is how drugs fuelled not just poor governance, but ultimately the anti-government sentiment which is now a hallmark of today’s neoliberal form of capitalism. If the government “sucks”, to use the parlance of our times…then getting rid of it as much as possible is smart, right? China’s government certainly started to really suck:

By the 1860s the drug trade allowed for a new tax on this “trade” – but this new source of income for the central government meant they no longer were pressured to rely on receiving taxes in return for providing good governance or adequate public services, thus deteriorating the quality of governance in China. The foreign-provoked drug trade essentially rewarded the central power with money for not governing (ignoring laws against drugs, ignoring the decreasing health, stability and quality of life of their citizens, etc.).

The rise of drug money created the resources for traders and the gentry to bribe officials at all levels, further reducing the central government’s ability to govern properly. And that’s even among those pubic servants who actually tried: For example, when the central government tried in 1884 to fix the tax system it was quickly abandoned. The only reason for such poor policy is corrupt, inept government – corruption techniques clearly permitted the interests of the new local druglord bourgeois to win out.

The trade was also so lucrative it provided local “warlords” with resources to provide their own government services, making them appear superior to the central government. Thus “big government” begins to be fairly disparaged as being staffed by lazy, incompetent and / or immoral people – echoing today’s complaints – even though these new local “leaders” made their money off drugs, instead of real work.

This repeated weakening of the imperial prestige due to this bad governance encouraged some support for local warlords, who are the ultimate capitalist supporters. This further eroded the national / central authority and thus their ability to govern well.

All these combined social catastrophes culminated in multiple rebellions and civil war: the “Taiping Rebellion” (1851-1864) was a multinational affair, which the English and French took advantage of to prop up their puppet, and which gutted Chinese society as significantly as the American Civil War and over roughly the same time period. These rebellions also caused government to respond by militarising of the countryside for the first time since the Qin era (221-206 BC). The war effort also caused the rise of new taxes on peasants, which never endear one to the government.

That’s quite a few kicks in the teeth to the idea of good governance, no?

To recap: The West’s (drug) “Treaty Century” was – in the span of just one generation – able to 1) totally discredit the central government, 2) discredit all government, 3) discredit the longstanding cultural and religious authorities, 4) foster the rise of self-interested, unpatriotic, extremely violent local governments, 5) create new classes of super-landed rich, who turned into an out-of-touch, absentee, uncaring urban elite, 6) foster corruption at all levels, 7) create spiritual chaos, 8) create political-cultural chaos and elitism, because who can have faith in the democratic ideal of the self-governing abilities of one’s neighbours when 1 out of every 4 of them is on drugs? 9) Actually create situations of open rebellion against the government, 10) Create situations of the societally-draining need for armed resistance to invading powers.

And things only get worse in the two coming generations!

The link between drugs and capitalism, and thus anti-democracy, is thus clearly illuminated in modern Chinese history: Imperialism, drugs and bad governance clearly have a synergistic effect, like the sky-high cancer rates of people who worked with asbestos and also smoked.

Indeed, the history of socialist-inspired countries which have true wars on drugs – China, Iran, Cuba – illuminate this link, and also explain why their zero tolerance efforts are so strong and their punishments so harsh.

I imagine that the Dutch would not have been so content to be drug-happy if a foreign power had been the one controlling its influence in the Netherlands….

Again, this clear cause-and-effect between Western-backed drug schemes and the end of non-Western society as we know it is obviously not limited to just China, but has been replicated in countless societies in 2018:

One may not support the ideals of the Taliban, for example, but what chance did they have to improve Afghan society when the US invaded and made opium production higher than ever? Indeed, many Afghans undoubtedly say the Taliban are much better than living in a state of US imperialism. Opium has, once again, again been used to totally create a dysfunctional, divided society which doesn’t know what is up or down, just as it did in China pre-1949.

By Generation 2, the taint of drug money is gone & cultural revolution is underway

The various effects of drug money – quite logically – totally reduced support for any government by making them appear incompetent…which they were.

By the 1890s China was so weakened that the Japanese invaded, and China lost the Sino-Japanese War. Payments required to fund this failed war caused the monarchy to become heavily indebted to the West.

In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion – against foreigners and arrogant Christian missionaries, but unlike the Taiping Rebellion now with the imperial dynasty (rallying cry: “Support the Qing, destroy the foreign!”) – saw China become effectively split: the rich south allied with the foreigners against the rebellious north; opium made the southern “capital” Shanghai the new vice capital of the world and also the home of China’s new “trade” bourgeoisie (we know of mainly which product). Effectively an entire continent was split and not just a country (China as continent is explained in the first part of this series). It was balkanisation under Western auspices and to the detriment of the local 99%, as usual.

Clearly, by just the 2nd generation of the “Drug Treaty Century” China had totally fallen apart politically, morally and culturally.

The drive to remodel China’s political culture began in this 2nd generation. We must strive to put ourselves in the shoes of the Chinese back in that era:

Just as the ideals of socialism are being heavily discussed in Europe and Russia, there is one generation in adulthood and another one growing up with the idea of government as a completely-negative force. Monarchy is on the way out, but socialist ideals are being heavily discredited from the get-go, with resources being stored up to fight against it:

“Socialism and this new guy Karl Marx?! Government by and for these drug-addled bozos?! No thanks – I’ll get and keep mine by any means necessary. ”

This 2nd generation sees China changing from a “China with Chinese characteristics” to a “China with West European (bourgeois) characteristics” – it’s a cultural revolution.

The new Chinese druglord bourgeois were – being bourgeois – ultimately a class loyal only to themselves, their power and their money. They had unprecedented means to reshape classic Chinese culture in the Western bourgeois mold, and they did.

This nouveaux riche class will sound quite modern:

They worked with foreigners for personal gain at the expense of the nation’s 99%.

They claimed to be “philanthropists” who supported charities with unpaid taxes that should have gone the central authority. However, these charities did not capably replace the reduced central government services, of course.

They denigrated the state bureaucracy as incapable.

They claimed to be “activists” who promoted modernity, but were mere individualists promoting their own interests.

They remade society’s most important instructional force – education.

In 1901 major school reforms started, adopting the Japanese system which – unlike Vietnam and Korea – was not strongly influenced by China’s civil service test. (Japan is, in my mind, a Western country: “Western” is a culture, and Japan went over whole hog, as evidenced by their decades of imperialism – this did permit them to avoid getting the fast-drip China Drug Torture treatment….)

The government examination system was unwanted by the new drug-money elite because it was meritocratic: its existence directly challenged the new concept of the “private school” (a foreign concept imported to China) which the 1% use today to maintain their dominance.

The privatisation of schools – the loss of state control – serves to transfer control of schooling to the 1%, and schools henceforth exist to indoctrinate a new technocratic class – one which is loyal to their privileged class and not their own People or their own State. And what is the the biggest anti-union drive in Anglophone countries today? The drive to privatise schools: if capitalists can get that instituted, one of the biggest remaining unions will be no more, and a huge percentage of the government will also disappear.

So we should not be surprised to see how John King Fairbank, Harvard’s first China scholar and the author of the leading English-language university textbook on the country, China: A New History, celebrates the end of the Chinese civil service tests:

“Alas, it was soon found that students would continue to aim mainly at the old examinations as a more prestigious and much cheaper route of advancements, bypassing the difficult modern curriculum and greater cost of the modern schools. There was nothing for it but to abolish the classical examinations entirely in 1905. This great turning point stopped production of the degree-holding elite, the gentry class. The old order was losing its intellectual foundation and therefore its philosophical cohesion….The neo-Confucian synthesis was no longer valid, yet nothing to replace it was as yet in sight.”

The gentry class – who had previously earned their status via merit (the meritocratic examination system – was “stopped”, while this new gentry class earned their status via the drug trade. The “neo-Confucian synthesis was no longer valid” only to foreign invaders and drug barons.

But Fairbank, being unsympathetic and unknowledgeable of Chinese culture (and certainly unwilling to allow it to stand strongly and in opposition to Western dominance), celebrates the death of thousands of years of native culture because he wants to replace it with neoliberal capitalism. Revolutions in learning are fine, but not when they are not focused for the benefit of foreign capitalists and the local bourgeoisie, whether China’s drug lords or modern Brussels’ technocrats. Indeed, then these changes are not “revolutions in learning”, but reactionary, stultifying and impoverishing changes. Ultimately, these schools were remembered for producing the “warlord generation” of 1916-27: indeed, China became most Westernised in this.

What’s hugely important to realize is that the 99% of the second generation of the “Drug Treaty Century” certainly did not agree that nascent neoliberalism had brought local benefits. The people hated this switch to “local governance”, and thus they had major rebellions, of which I only mentioned the two biggest as is common. Fairbank admits this, but doesn’t really care (as a capitalist and neoliberal):

“’Local self-government,’ despite its happy resonance in the minds of Western advocates of democracy, had its own rather different meaning for the Chinese common people. The term in reality usually designated a managerial agency of the local elites, which they used to secure their villagers’ taxes to support modern improvements. Road building, setting up modern schools, and paying for police were improvements desired by the modernizing elite, but paying higher taxes to secure them increased the villagers’ burden faster than it benefited them. There were many peasant protests against ‘reform’.”

By 1908 the drug profit-fuelled gentry had too much money, too much land and too much power: the Empress declared a constitutional system, with 0.4% of the population (all men) allowed to vote in a bourgeois system. This 0.4% were not just drug dealers, but European-apers in every way – they were the bourgeois, selfish merchants and militarists (whether in open or secret) which Western society is based on.

The monarchy – gutted by foreign debt from the Boxer Rebellion Against Foreigners And Arrogant Christians, unable to restore power usurped by the provinces, out-spent by the new bourgeois class, unable to create a unified army – abdicated in 1912 and was replaced by the Chinese Republic.

Bourgeois constitutionalism in the context of a monarchy is – history, and also today’s newspaper, repeatedly proves – a pact between the monarchy / aristocracy and the bourgeois traders against the 99%. However, even Fairbank admits the 99% wanted no part of this change, because the Chinese imperial system – where a Heavenly Mandate rested upon demonstrably good governance and not mere bloodlines like in Europe – was arguably superior to Western Europe’s “modern” democracy despite being a monarchy, because China ostensibly switched from a pact between the monarchy and the 99% for a pact between the 1% themselves.

For nations without popular, socialist-inspired revolutions…a monarchy-1% pact, or a pact to self-deify the 1% and boot out the monarchy, is where history effectively ends and their present is found.

But for Western academics like Fairbank, the clear tragedy which was the first two generations of the (Drug) “Treaty Century” could never be lain at the feet of obvious collusion between a new Chinese free trade-loving, drug lord upper-class and Western warlords. Instead it was the natural result of the inherent stupidities of Chinese culture and, that old standby, the “passive” character of the average Chinese person (which I noted that Fairbank also employed as a politically-scientific explanation to explain both the Great Leap’s famine and the Cultural Revolution):

“These inadequacies of the old regime in administration and finance were deeply rooted in Chinese custom, political values, and social structure. It became apparent that the Qing government had been superficial, passive, and indeed parasitic for too long. It could not become modern.”

Fairbank – like all Americans – may be against monarchical rule, but he is definitely not against aristocratic-technocratic-1% rule….

Clearly, by the birth of the third generation China’s drug-fuelled failures had destroyed seemingly everything, and of course the bourgeois are all-too happy to pick up (and keep) the pieces.

Early Chinese drug barons were truly just ‘modern conservatives’

Just as Westerners inaccurately call it the “Treaty Century”, it is also inaccurate to call this 3rd generation the “Warlord Era”, as is common: these warlords were not tribal savages, as the name implies, but instead the supporters of West European (bourgeois) democracy and modern conservatism.

And yet despite the crystal-clear similarities, I have never read of an early 20th century Western small town or big city politician demoted to a “warlord”, much less even Hitler or Mussolini?

“Warlord Era” is thus a racist term which allows Western to fancifully indulge in illusions to Ghengis Khan which only they find witty; crucially, it also reveals a racist mindset when viewing China which helps them to deny that China could ever be “modern” like the West. But this was indeed the case: these anti-socialist “warlords” were the local fascist Brownshirt-type of leaders which were everywhere in Europe and America in the 1920s and 1930s – the fascist supporters of Chiang Kai-Shek were known as the Blue Shirts, after all.

China’s fascists, like their European peers, were capitalists but they had the virtue of at least being nationalistic capitalists; neoliberal capitalists, however, have no nation whatsoever. This is why neoliberalism – who are currently dominant, probably because they are so unsentimental and ruthless – deride any modern nationalistic capitalist movement as “fascist”, “populism”, “Trumpism”, etc. In 1930’s China nobody was crazily saying “I’m proud to have no country” yet, but the times do change quicker than we all think….

I take this quote here from Fairbank to describe the ideology of this group of neo-bourgeois, which he applied to the first generation but which obviously holds true to the the third generation:

”From the perspective of modern times they were conservatives. Their eventual alienation from the effete Manchu ruling house would be based on the cultural nationalism of Chinese patriots determined to preserve not only their country but also their own social leadership and domination.”

If one insists that Fairbank would not have used that quote to describe the 3rd generation, that’s fine with me: I agree that modern Western conservatism is equal to what passed for modern in 1860s China. I certainly agree modern conservatives are that backward! But, clearly, the quote holds true into the 1940s.

“Warlord Era”, and the like, allows Westerners to picture the Chinese as an unchangeable Yellow Horde, when they were really just plain-old modern conservatives. This is a common tactic of not just Fairbank but all pre-Politically Correct Western academia: repeatedly dehumanising non-Whites and making it appear unthinkable that modern Westerners can feel kinship with modern non-Whites.

But China’s druglord bourgeois were indeed all in favor of the harsh repression of modern conservatism’s targets: of socialist, labor and feminist movements. Make no mistake: These social trends had obviously reached China too, and no more so than in Shanghai, where Chiang massacred the communists and made the Kuomintang dedicated modern fascists.

“At Shanghai Chinese merchants soon stood opposed to the new and leftist labor movement. In this stance they had foreign support. In reflecting many years later on his raising funds at Shanghai for crushing the labor movement Chen Guangfu stated the aim had been to topple militarism, the warlords, and support a modern government.”

Fairbank quotes and elevates Chen Guangfu, one of Shanghai’s most powerful US-allied entrepreneurs and high financiers. He was clearly part of the new druglord bourgeoisie which opposed the many anti-capitalist aspects of 20th century fascism – Chen was truly a modern, small-government, no-nation neoliberal, and thus Fairbank is trying to exonerate his funding of the massive massacres of human beings for being leftist. This is modern conservatism, of course.

However, repressing “the new and leftist labor movement” – which certainly included feminist, racial-equality and other socialist-inspired popular movements – can never be considered “modern”.1849 China was not “modern”. Indeed, this is only a “modern government” to West European (bourgeois) neoliberals like Fairbank, who is clearly are the same ideologically as Chinese warlords (and from 1849 or 1948 – your choice).

The monarchy-free drug lord gentry would have been quite happy if the Chinese Republic still existed today instead of the People’s Republic of China, of course.

Or to use another racist Western term employed by the likes of Fairbank: “civil warlordism”. LOL, certainly the United State’s battle between Lincoln and the Confederacy’s aristocrats was a far more totally barbaric “civil warlordism” – one side was defending slavery, after all. “Civil warlordism” is only reserved for China not only because of the ruthless effectiveness of the ancient Mongols, but because Mao and other Chinese socialist leaders were nothing but lying warlords to the likes of Fairbank, even though they fought to end China’s human bondage.

But China’s less than decade-long experience with bourgeois constitutionalism before rejecting this West European invention thus parallels the Russian experience:

The difference being that Russia was fortunate enough to have a drastically revolutionary concept to implement – socialism – whereas China was not as much at the crest of the wave of progress, and that China was further from the geographic centre of this movement in an era of limited communication abilities. And, again, 25% percent of Russia was also not using drugs.

But make no mistake – Yuan, in collaboration with the druglord gentry, ended the Chinese Republic specifically in order to forestall socialist-inspired changes:

“Having initiated the 1911 Revolution that ended the imperial check on their power, the provincial elite (which did not exist in the imperial era, and which only rose to power recently during the Drug Treaty Era) resumed their stance for stability and so ‘gave a pivotal support in 1913,’ says Esherick (Joseph Esherick, one of Fairbank’s own proteges), for Yuan’s assumption of dictatorial powers. Their instinct was to save China from the chaos that they feared further change would create. In this way conservatism thwarted any social revolution.

That is exactly what modern conservatives do in 2018 – use dictatorial powers to thwart social progress.

We clearly see the antecedents of today’s “liberal strongman” like French President Emmanuel Macron, who is using rule by executive decree – i.e., the dictatorial power of one person – to deconstruct socialist policies and programs which existed before he came into office?

Therefore, “liberal warlord” should be the term used by those historians who come from the opposite side of the political spectrum as Fairbank to describe modern France.

(It’s too bad I came up with this phrase on the final edit of this article – it would have made this article’s title more interesting than ‘liberal strongman’, LOL! Too late to change it now though….)

Macron is indeed equivalent to a Chinese / Taiwan warlord: Not only is he waging imperialist wars (in Africa and the Middle East), but he is waging war against his own people (normalized the police state of emergency) and is repeatedly and profoundly undermining the prestige, services and reach of France’s central government.

Scientists, and many women, might even say he is also a true drug baron: he married into a chocolate empire!

But the straight line is clear: Anglophone golden-boy and neoliberal darling Macron is the clear ideological inheritor of these drug baron bourgeois. 1849, to a Chinese (and an Iranian) was not that long ago – this line is straight and clear and now proven.

(I won’t countenance that Macron is actually pro-government because he pushes for more EU government, for multiple reasons: The “more government” does not at all equal an increase in true democracy; I think he knows they have no chance of even getting approved; these are the exact same ideas the French 1% has been pushing for since after World War II, as I have proven; and this pro-government stance is not more defining than his obvious disregard for democracy, the opinion of the 99% and the socialist safety net.)

Both Macron and China’s druglord gentry want a bourgeois ruling class, which lives apart from a continually-impoverished 99%, and which has no problem denying modern democratic changes and suppressing popular rebellions: “Modern conservatives” and “liberal warlordism” indeed….

Show me a country awash in drugs, and I’ll show you a capitalist-imperialist nation

Unlike a typical drug crash, we can still finish on a high note!

It is impressive how short this bourgeois, Western republic stood: the Chinese people quickly saw that socialism was needed but – unfortunately – that required a long civil war provoked by modern conservatives and liberal warlords.

Fairbank, a modern conservative himself, must have known he was on the wrong side: He even relates how Mao knew the problems caused by West European, bourgeois, “modern”, “multi-party” democracy, all of which are similar today. Fairbank cites Mao in 1926:

“Peasants are oppressed, he said, by (1) heavy rents, half or more of the crop, (2) high interest rates, between 36% and 84% a year, (3) heavy local taxes, (4) exploitation of farm labor, and (5) the land owners cooperation with the warlords and corrupt officials to exploit the peasantry in every way possible. Behind this whole system laid the cooperation of the imperialists, who sought to maintain order for profitable trade in China.”

(Ya can’t say Mao didn’t see things clearly….)

We see how applicable this is to modern times (indeed, our elderly were living in this recent era!):

Just replace high taxation with “continuously low wages / purchasing power” and the effect is the same; interest-induced debt slavery remains unchanged; in a Europe which is seeing the rich Germans, French and Dutch cannibalise the weaker Greece, Ireland, Portugal and others, we see that Western warlords have merely ended their White Power solidarity and have started imperialising their own race.

The EU, as I have proven and as was already-well known, is a series of structures which are defined by being corrupt, anti-democratic, anti-socialist and unrepentantly neoliberal.

And in drug trade nations, they are pushing in this negative direction as well. Compare the differences between Columbia and Venezuela: One nation is the leader of Latin neoliberalism and the biggest tool of Washington in the region, the other is the leader of Latin socialism – despite being neighbours and being in regular contact, their peoples and cultures couldn’t be more different. Indeed, I have yet to meet a Columbian who isn’t anti-Chavismo – this can only be explained by the fact that A) I have only meet Columbians from the 1%, and that is certainly not the case, or B) Many of Columbia’s 99% have been duped into believing that big government and socialism is bad via drug-induced powers.

So, above all, I hope this article showed that pre-socialist China illustrates how drug money created a situation where the idea that all government is corrupt becomes embedded at trulyall levels of society, and that this has elevated the neoliberal model of anti-governance to higher prominence and success.

Just as Chinese opium created riches in places far from China, so it impoverished political thought in both faraway lands and faraway times as well.

Indeed, I am certain that if an outside imperialist force were to be applied to the paradigm of Western societies (which are militarily impregnable), we would certainly see how neoliberalism would immediate descend into chaotic “civil warlordism” – because that is what happened in modern China.

And it was only socialism which was able to defeat that corrupt, elitist, capitalist system.

The reason for this may be because the visions of earthly paradise in capitalist and socialist societies are very, very different:

The capitalist view is clearly quite drug-addled: their goal is to retire rich at 40, live in sensual pleasure, free from societal constraints, and to have the ability to rule their tiny empires like petty dictators.

Modern socialism’s vision is superbly expressed in China’s President Xi’s lovely, enchanting phrase a “moderately prosperous society”. I love that modest ambition for materialism! And it so obviously implies ethical self-restraint in order to promote equality.

What is far more important than preserving the right for an individual to completely satiate their materialist ambitions is to have the universal stability required to do the good works necessary to always preserve an ethical, harmonious society.

If you disagree with that: what are you…on drugs?

***********************************

This is the 6th article in an 8-part series which compares old versus new Western scholarship on China.

Here is the list of articles slated to be published, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!

Once China got off drugs: The ideological path from opium to ‘liberal strongman’ Macron

Prefer the 1% or the Party? Or: Why China wins

China’s only danger: A ‘Generation X’ who thinks they aren’t communist

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.

The Essential Saker II: Civilizational Choices and Geopolitics / The Russian challenge to the hegemony of the AngloZionist Empire

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Karma’s a bitch. After two opium wars, it’s kinda funny when the talking heads on the nightly news here in the west whine about the influx of opioids from China. Guess they missed that history class….wait, so did I.

A very perceptive, interesting piece as usual by Ramin Mazaheri; thank you.

What’s especially heinous about China’s opium addiction en masse is that it was the result of Britain’s all-out rape and enslavement rule in India, where people were starved to death by the millions. Really, the peasants harvesting the opium there were exploited to the utmost. You see, that’s another most beautiful aspect of Drug Economics: It entails a very special brand of agro-business with which to force rural populations off subsistence farming, leaving them totally at the mercy of warlords and drug merchants (often the very same people).

With regard to warlords, Ramin writes:

”And yet despite the crystal-clear similarities, I have never read of an early 20th century Western small town or big city politician demoted to a ’warlord’, much less even Hitler or Mussolini”

For starters, let’s be clear here that Hitler and Mussolini are 100% Western political apeshit — I would have chosen ”not even” rather than ”much less even” above. Anyhow, such a demotion would actually do Hitler and Mussolini little justice. Unlike oppressed nations like 19th century China or India, ruled by callous lackeys and their total indifference towards the atrocious suffering of their nominal compatriots, Germany and Italy were disadvantaged in a fall-out among thieves over the global imperial booty. Hitler and Mussolini rose to prominence because their aggressive chauvinism and national self-pity were harboured by the majority population in contemporary Germany and Italy. A warlord is way more committed to his own, private well-being, just like the neocons and neoliberals of our era.

The opium wars were actually a struggle between conflicting interests in both China and Britain. When the British government tried to suppress the mostly Scottish smuggling families (because the trade was destroying Indian agriculture) the plan was blocked by their Chinese business partners (principally the Chinese Imperial Customs) who threatened to end all British commerce if they interfered with the trade.

”/…/ the British government tried to suppress the mostly Scottish smuggling families (because the trade was destroying Indian agriculture) the plan was blocked by their Chinese business partners /…/ ”

Sounds interesting — benevolent British rule and its tender, loving care for Indian agriculture being sabotaged by nasty, greedy Chinese and Scots. The invocation of Western victimology never ceases to impress me, LOL.

Well, I certainly won’t deny British imperial malevolence, but it is not victimology to acknowledge the enthusiastic participation of Scots in British imperialism. The initial financial institutions established in Hong Kong to launder opium trade profits were the house of Jardine Matheson, founded by two graduates of Edinburgh University, and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, founded by Thomas Sutherland, a graduate of Aberdeen University.

Education was the key to Scottish success in the business of imperialism within the “British” Empire. Scotland, with perhaps 15% of the main island population, had compulsory primary education through the Kirk of Scotland and five universities, in the seventeenth century. England only had two universities, very much restricted to the upper classes. So, while English society was majority illiterate, Scottish was majority literate. Only 10% of the Scottish population were Gaelic speaking highlanders. The majority of Scots spoke a closely related language to English, the “guid Scots tongue.” Read Robbie Burns poetry. It’s not English.

King James the sixth of Scotland, who succeeded his first cousin twice removed, Elizabeth of England, in 1603 as James the first of England, almost immediately began campaigning for the union of the crowns and called himself King of Great Britain, to which both parliaments, of England and Scotland, objected mightily. Nonetheless, union eventually came under his great granddaughter, Queen Anne. The Scots immediately renamed the “English” Empire as the “British” Empire.

The union resulted from great bribery of politicians in both parliaments by the Glasgow merchants, who had suffered a dismal failure in their own imperial venture, the Darien scheme. As a result of the union, Glasgow became the richest port on the west coast of Britain by the end of the eighteenth century, displacing Bristol and Liverpool in the tobacco and slave trades. Glasgow was days closer to North America by the great circle sailing route.

With a well educated population, as compared to England, the Scots essentially came to control the management of imperial ventures such as the East india Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, by the end of the eighteenth century. Scots also came to play a substantial role in the British military establishment. They didn’t displace English capital or profits. They managed them, and very effectively too. The House of Lords was still debating the opium trade in the 1920s, and blocking reform initiatives. It may be that India gained its independence in 1948, because the Chinese communists were shutting down the opium trade, and making continued efforts to control India unprofitable.

Very interesting info on Scottish culture/education. Yes, the Scots figure strongly in the story of the Great Game and the East India Company in Hindustan. And so, very likely, also in the Opium War.
It is quite possible for a single city to rise to national dominance in the age of mercantilism and imperioal expansion. Also Scotland produced great engineers.

It is very valuable to spotlight the groups within an imperial power AND a target for colonial exploitation that stand the profit the most. British “consumers” might be happy to get their tea, but they were not really profiting from the policies of trade under forced conditions of “breaking open”? How is this really any different from aryanization of jewish businesses in Germany and Austria, when you come right down to it? Jews had built up their businesses, and then through aryanization the Nazi regime/German state arrogated to themselves the profits, the plant, the know-how (often forcing the owners to continue to work for new owners for a pittance and teach them how to run the business, until they were sent off to a camp). So, kind of an internal colonization.

Anyhow, back to elites in potential colonies working with the invader/colonizer: John K. Thornton, in A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, describes how I think it was Pizarro kind of stumbled into a situation in Peru where two factions of the ruling family were already competing and had kind of divided up the Inca empire. It might have been a succession fight. So one brother was quite happy to get Pizarro on his side to help topple his competitor. Can’t recap it all here. But Thornton’s book is fabulous and reads like a novel. He is one of the very best historians out there writing for both scholarly and lay readers. One of his strong points is that he has accessed many, many archives previously more or less unknown and reconstructed the pre-Contact political situations in both the Americas and in West Africa (and in Spain, showing how most of the conquistadors came from one province, can’t recall which one now, and why).

So, another point is that the Western default setting is to see conquered lands in terms of their having been “discovered” and seeing this discovery point by Europeans as the beginning of their history. Even when the conquered or sabotaged lands/countries have far longer histories than the upstart Europeans. Maybe this makes it hard for Western historians to think in terms of grasping the machinations and maneuverings of subgroups in both the colonizing and the colonized countries. And from the point of view of controlling the historical narrative, the less said about such internal struggles as possible. Maybe the mission civilitrice doesn’t look so great when you pull back the veil on the actual dirty businesses going on and the personal fortunes being made by both colonizers and “natives.”

So factions of colonized countries—especially those with a sophisticated complex political structure— will have their own agendas and make the most of new power arriving on its shores—maybe thinking that they can ultimately control the outsiders. If aliens were to appear on Earth, do you think the Earthlings would all band together to defend Earth? I doubt it. Some self-appointed delegation would show up at the Space Ship to offer an alliance with the Aliens if they will help one Earthling faction beat out the other.

Hajduk’s post above amounts to a nonsensical distraction, even were there some far fetched, quaint ”substance” to the claims being made. I have to confess I was quite angry when that was the only reply to my own ’quite serious’ submission about British imperialist violence and horror being perpetrated against the world’s two most populous countries simultaneously.

Thie following passage is perhaps the most absurd/hilarious claim Hajduk makes:

”/…/ the plan was blocked by their Chinese business partners (principally the Chinese Imperial Customs) who threatened to end all British commerce if they interfered with the trade.”

Here, Hajduk at least is suggesting two interesting things:

Firstly, that the British ’commerce’ wasn’t primarily — actually entirely — about enslaving China by poisoning her people with opium produced by Indian peasant slave-labour.

Secondly, that the dysfunctional Chinese state on the verge of utter collapse would be able of any retaliation whatsoever.

Some prefer to airbush out the complicity of native governments in colonial exploitation, in favour of a much simpler narrative. The above information is from Frank Welsh’s ‘A History of Hong Kong’. The principal Scottish offenders were William Jardine and James Matheson.

It’s commonly held that the British introduced Opium to China. China traded with the Crown only in gold. Not being able to flog their wares, for which there likely would have been eager markets in China, a trade deficit developed. Looking to stem the depletion of gold, they hit upon Opium, which was then used a currency in South China. Jonathan Spence has an article about how people would carry a bloc of opium to the market, and shave off so many grams as payment for vegetables.

Although they couldn’t trade freely, what the British could do was to take Indian opium, which was much more potent than the strains the Chinese were used to, get it cheap and sell it dear. Trade deficit: Solved. It worked for a few decades, till the Chinese farmers managed to replicate the Indian strains, and then the market advantage disappeared.

As to the article itself, one of the glaring omissions is mention of the #1 foreign enemy of the time — the Qing Dynasty.

”Although they couldn’t trade freely, what the British could do was to take Indian opium, which was much more potent than the strains the Chinese were used to, get it cheap and sell it dear. Trade deficit: Solved.”

Oh, lucky accident indeed. No coercion and no violence; neither in India, nor in China. So when Lin Zexu with the consent of his Emperor — both men utterly shocked by the consequences for the Chinese (as a people) of the British ’free trade’ — tried to stop the drug import to China forcefully, that was a, shall we say, act of ’state totalitarian violence’ which had to be quelled. And quelled it was by Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, leaving death and destruction in its wake — the British rubbing it in by demanding hefty payments from the hapless Chinese.

In view of the above, Hajduk’s latest slur about the complicity of native governments in colonial exploitation looks somewhat fanciful. As for India, the British were the government there. And yet we are supposed to believe the claim that these callous, rapacious parasites cared for Indian agriculture, actually trying to stop opium production?? Well, if so, they could just have burned the crops as they burned and destroyed en masse elsewhere, no?

All in all, this has been a most interesting discussion. Imperialist apologetics in a 19th century context prove irrefutably that the ideology of Western human rights is alive and well, as well as shedding light upon the very practices on which it depends.

Not only did the British not stop opium production, they forced farmers to give up food crops and grow opium instead.They had quotas to meet, and not doing so would result in beatings or even mutilations. Just enough to still keep them productive of course. The government bought the opium at a set price, obviously low, leaving the farmers starving as they then didn’t have enough to buy food. They destroyed even the little subsistence agriculture that those farmers could earlier practice.

Anyone suggesting that the ones to blame were really the Chinese and some Scotsman who were somehow independent of the otherwise well meaning British Empire is purposely denying the very nature of Empire. Missing the woods for the trees, if we give them the benefit of doubt.

thanks for the article! very interesting read, very few (including myself) are aware of that CN history.

“Understatements aside, is there any product which is more superbly capitalist than drugs? There is no regulation, competition is cutthroat without limitation, and the profit margins are in the hundreds of percent – it’s better than arms dealing.”

Pretty good staff, but one thing which I certainly know that you are completely wrong, is the issue of Taliban. Taliban is a tribal fascist wahabi cult. Taliban is the 2nd generation of Wahabi butchers, while first were so called Mujahidden and the 3th one Al-qaida, while ISIS is the latest and 4th generation.
Out of 1000 civilian death 900 Is caused by these bloody butchers. In the eyes of Afghan people US is still the lesser evil. Almost evey week there is a bloody suicide or similar bombing in Kabul or other part of Afghanistan.
Soo, please do not insult Afghans by wrongly claiming that Taliban is better. You are so out of touch with reality as far as concern Taliban issue.
Taliban consist 99% of the Pushtoon tribe and this is a tribal fascist ideology inspired and amplified by Wahabi hatred against all other nationalities and ethnicities in Afghanistan. I want to be very clear here, IT is a war against Persian and other non-Pushtoon people of Afghanistan.
Taliban is a creation of AngloZios in cooperation with Pakistani ISI. Those who support Taliban all are of Pushtoon tribal background, this is a lithmus test. Ask any non Pushtoon person from Afghanistan specially Persians of Afghanistan, IF you find one such person, you are a winner.

When a society is continually attacked, civil society eventually disintegrates. We saw that in Cambodia, where that society was totally undermined by the West, which led to Lon Nol and then Pol Pot. It is miraculous that Vietnam and Laos did not go down the same road. Though it has taken decades for both countries to recover.

Likewise, both China and India were relentlessly attacked both culturally as well as militarily and economically.
Afghanistan was a decent country with education for women and a socialist society. We all know how socialism and Arab nationalism were undermined using Wahabbism throughout the Islamic world. How can we expect Afghanistan to be in good shape after continuous assault on many levels since the 1970’s?

So a society whose civil society’s ‘immune system’ can be so weakened that an opportunistic disease, the equivalent of cancer or tuberculosis will produce as in Afghanistan’s case, the Taliban. The country falls into hell and it can take years, if ever, to recover.

That the Afghanis are forced to accept the cause of the disease, US policy to destroy the country, as better than the Taliban is quite shocking. Like concentration camp dwellers whose trauma was so internalized that they ran back into the camps when they had a chance to be freed.

How can Afghanistan recover its national self respect enough to take their country back from its two main tormenters, Western Imperialism and Wahabbi totalitarianism? Caught in a vice between both, the odds looked stacked against it.

That is why Duterte understood the danger of drugs to the Philippines and engaged all out war against it. He has been roundly criticised by the ” enlightened ” west and their fake concerns for human rights. even the ICC wanted to investigate Duterte but refused to investigate proven war criminals like G Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Hitlery Clinton and countless others.

Exactly. And the presence of US bases especially in Third World countries such as the Philippines inevitably brings the wondrous joys of substance abuse, child prostitution/molestation, and lawlessness to these countries without exception. Duterte connects the dots just splendidly.

Here is where the Libertarians need to grow up and realize that it is not just “all about me” and the fact that “I own MY body and NO ONE but myself, anywhere, any way, shape or form, has any right to tell ME what I can or cannot do with MY body.”

That’s fine and I understand that some substances you would like to ingest open “The Doors Of Perception” as that Agent of British Imperialism Aldous Huxley called the mysterious workings and capacities of the human brain.

However most of the substances (drugs) will have an effect, predetermined by their societal and financial beneficiaries of making you more stupid, and therefore an unwitting instrument of your own enslavement and that of others as well.

Plain FACT!

There are certain individual rights to be respected, but you want to elevate THIS right, to pop whatever you please into your mouth or otherwise ingest anything by smoke or injection to the highest level of THE most sacred “human right” regardless of the macro effects concerning the aggregate destrruction of “freedom” all around you???

Really??

In the spring of 1972, a few weeks before graduation from an Ivy League university, I walked along the row of mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. Two ideas stuck in my mind:

1. The openly disclosed fact that a great many of the fortunes which erected the Atlantic-facing old homes I walked in front of were derived from “Yankee Clippers” (the fastest large sailing ships ever built) employed in the China Opium trade.

2. The also frankly admitted fact that the founders of the University I was about to graduate from had derived their fortunes from that very same trade, were among the most “successful” owners of a fleet of Yankee Clippers. They had been drug pushers, physically. In a way, they STILL were, ideologically.But it was all now “respectable”.

Instead of heading to Wall Street, with much of my graduating class, after a few years of post graduation floundering, I headed to Alaska.

I agree, generally, and applaud the author and the essay. However this: ” Understatements aside, is there any product which is more superbly capitalist than drugs? There is no regulation, competition is cutthroat without limitation, and the profit margins are in the hundreds of percent – it’s better than arms dealing.” as a claim is problematic, untrue, needs fixin’

Drugs are always regulated…generally by corrupt cops of one sort or another, a serious deadly violence. This is necessary, as the intrinsic cost is trivial… When drugs are actually unregulated – for example in the remote backwoods – they lapse into almost harmless material, in terms of social costs. It is in fact the ruthless regulation that brings really terrible results.

Some schmuck making corn whiskey or growing his own pot, or opium, that is not great, a waste of his time and labor (maybe), but it is a trivial cost to the people…

This is not intended to undermine the author’s position, but to clarify what seems to have been merely a weak spot in the semantics…

Going a bit deeper, the Nth drug operation is not especially capital-intensive. Rather it requires Power, not (a lot of) Capital… So it may be seen by some as essentially Fascist rather than Capitalist… Semantics are important to clear thinking, amigo… But we all use the term “Capitalist” in imprecise ways…

In The Return of a King, can be found interesting sidelights on the beginnings of the Opium War, from the p.o.v. of the guy who I guess more or less ran it, Lord Auckland. See p. 197.
On 392 (in 1842): ” Around India, rumors spread that , with much of the Indian army absent in China fighting Aucklland’s Opium War, the Afghans wuld soon be pourin gdown the Khyber Pass to loot th e plains of Hindustan as they had done so often in the past.”

See also p. 439.

I wonder whether anything has been written that brings these two imperial adventures into clear relationship? Chapter 1 of The Great Game for Afghanistan and chapter 1 of the push to control China’s economy, or, “break it open.” Strange how things just don’t change that much . . . The First Opium war seems to have started just as the first invasion of Afghanistan was ending in disaster for BRitish/Company troops. In Afghanistan the goal seems to have been to put a puppet on the throne and thus to control the country and maybe annex Af. to East India company controlled Hindustan. In China the goal seems to have been more purely commercial or mercantilistic as opposed to geopolitical . .. And to stabilize the Home economy (sense I get from Wikipedia)

The tales of both the Afghanistan invasion and then the Opium Wars leave one slack-jawed and at a loss for words concerning the British and Anglo Chutzpah in the audacity of their self-righteous raids on other societies’ wealth and actually, also, their whole culture. So, the British wanted to drink tea and it was distorting the local economy. So, go and change a foreign economy and polity so the English can enjoy their tea. An early version of What is our oil doing under your desert? What is our tea doing growing on your trees and on your slopes and i n your climate? And BTW we also will appropriate your tea culture and methods of cultivation and curing and start competing plantations to drive you to ruin if you don’t do what we say. ?????

The opium wars were terrible.
An article like this is very good and a necessary discussion starter.

But sir, 1917 Russian revolution was good for Russians? Socialism installed?
There are many more learned than I that will educate you regarding the genocide that came with the Bolsheviks and their tribe.
Ideological solidarity seems to trump truth for you, sir.

”But sir, 1917 Russian revolution was good for Russians? Socialism installed?
There are many more learned than I that will educate you regarding the genocide that came with the Bolsheviks and their tribe.”

Well, for starters, the Russians themselves seem to be fairly proud of it:

The ”über-horrors” of the USSR make up the key part of the West’s bogus curriculum of History so, yes, lots of appropriately educated folks in the West debunking the Russians’ own supposedly piss-poor judgment, LOL.

On a more serious note, it wasn’t the Bolsheviks who started the World Wars. Thanks to Bolshevism, the USSR had an unprecedented boom in science, art, literacy despite the full-scale invasions by Western murderers and their subsequent use of permanent nuclear blackmail. Bottom line: Bolshevism passed the test of Russian patriotism; Western Liberalism and ditto Fascism not so.

As an aside, it’s quite entertaining to watch the schizophrenia of Westerners who claim that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were a mere bunch of sell-outs to Western/Jewish bankers (an earlier rendition of the slander was invoking Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Kaiser Wilhelm II). All right: so when the Bolsheviks passed the decree that nullified Czarist Russia’s enormous debt obligations to these people and was duly ”rewarded” by invading genocidal hordes from the West, are we looking at some sort of ”contract breach” on Lenin’s part? Or didn’t the West understand that Lenin was their faithful lackey?

The video shows the Russian artist Oleg Gazmanov singing ”Born in the USSR” live before a most receptive Russian audience. The main reason why the USSR is appreciated in today’s Russia is because it was patriotic; it brought huge improvements with regard to virtually every single living condition in Russia; the Red Army defeated the fascist West twice over. If all that strikes you as ”hilarious”, then so be it. Westerners usually find it difficult and highly uninspiring trying to understand countries and peoples having some moral stature to show for them.

Seriously, Saker wrote here quite extensively about the horrors or Bolshevk terror. And I don’t suspect his position is a result of him being exposedto Western curriculum. He also stressed that it is not the murdered, but the murderers that have the chance to reproduce. That is the reason for positive attitude of part of contemporary Russian population to the revolution. And I stress, it is not Russian sociey as a whole.

There is a myth that Maos communists cleaned up China’s drug issues after the opium wars.
The truth seems to be that the regions that grew and supplies ltd the opium stopped doing so, or rather were allowed to stop by their masters.
Is it a coincidence that Britain leaves India, at least officially (brown saheebs still run India on behalf if white masters we all know that) in 1947 and soon thereafter opium production stops in the subcontinent.

Sound similar to a certain country’s invasion of Afghan and the subsequent huge rise in opium production that has targeted Russia, Europe and India (that I know of, I am unsure if the flow is directed at China this time.). We know the flows if drugs because of the epidemic of drugs that has attacked people in Europe (through Turkey and Kosovo), Russia (through central Asian Stans) and North West India particularly Punjab (through Pakistan).

Correction. Doesn’t Hajduk know that the Chinese Imperial Customs were controlled by the British drug pushers ?? All custom duties collected went straight into British coffers. None went to China.

It is the height of revisionism to suggest that the Chinese Government was in favour of the opium trade.

It is line of thinking tries to white wash the demonic Brits. Imperialism is wrapped in the drug trade. Look at Afghanistan where the opium crop is protected by US troops and it is well known that the CIA was the main conduit for drugs flow into S Vietnam and also the drug trade in Latin America.

Imperialists will stop at nothing including using drugs and terrorists as their means of aggression.

Correction. Doesn’t Hajduk know that the Chinese Imperial Customs were controlled by the British drug pushers ?? All custom duties collected went straight into British coffers. None went to China.

It is the height of revisionism to suggest that the Chinese Government was in favour of the opium trade.

This line of thinking tries to white wash the demonic Brits. Imperialism is wrapped up in the drug trade. Look at Afghanistan where the opium crop is protected by US troops and it is well known that the CIA was the main conduit for drugs flow into S Vietnam and also the drug trade in Latin America.

Imperialists will stop at nothing including using drugs and terrorists as their means of aggression.

The opium pipe was long a symbol of wealth and success in China. The problem was not manufactured by the British. In the wicked opium trade, just as in the wicked slave trade, there were forces opposed to the trade on both sides. Imperial mandarins personally profited from the opium trade just as African kings personally profited from the sale of their own people. In Britain, good people fought to abolish both forms of exploitation. So the truth lies somewhere in the middle. History is rather more complicated than ‘goodies vs. baddies’.

The case of Mexico is astonishing in a way because of its geographical location right in the border with the US. This demonstrates that the ones ruling do not care about consequences, profit is number one. Read the following: http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/968. The Zeta cartel is probably the most notorious, violent from all the cartels in Mexico, what was the aim of the US in providing weapons and training to this cartel (among others)? Their activities include not only drug, but also human trafficking, killings, torture etc. They target not only rival cartels but also innocent civilians and inmigrants! coming from the south of Mexico and countries south of Mexico to the US. Was this strategy (to target inmigrants) designed to put fear on those so they would not dare to do the journey to the US? What is the Mosad doing there? These inmigrants (could easily qualify as refugees) flying from countries destroyed by different means (not only war) by the US. The US has been doing this with relative impunity in the Middle East due to the geography refugees go to Europe in the first place. In Central, South America the sitution (geograhy) is different people can move all the way to the US so this could explains why the US has helped in the creation and training of this gangs that is to harass, terrorize and kill inmigrants. Now they will build the wall! Just like the Brittish leaving the EU so to not have to take risponsability of the mess they left in the middle East together with the US and others.

In this article and the “Mao’s legacy defended” article in this series the author refers to John King Fairbank as a “clueless academician” who’s errors stem from his lack of understand of the Chinese culture. Far from being clueless I believe Mr. Fairbank is a very intelligent and informed academician, however he has chosen a career as a well paid propagandist for the imperialistic view of China. As the author quotes John Lennon in “Mao’s legacy defended” article “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / you ain’t gonna make it with anyone, anyhow.” I also believe that Mr. Fairbank appreciates being called a “clueless academician” it is a far better title than a “sellout academician

Not much a fan of Fairbank, a much dimmer light than his predecessor, Lattimore, and deservedly eclipsed by his successor, Spence. Those were dark days indeed for China scholarship, the era when Fairbank was Dean.There was little or no access to the Mainland, and one easy route to scholarship was to re-type press releases from the People’s Daily as if they were established fact.

Fairbanks himself was often all over the map, romanticizing Mao’s revolution one minute, touting the imperalistic view you mention the next. Admittedly, it was a tough crowd. Americans had little patience for understanding China on its terms, and little ability to think with the entirely different set of fundamental assumptions that requires.

The situation today is a bit more nuanced. An academic can get access to China, but if he or she runs too far afoul of the official party line about the period or area of studies being pursued, that access will be cut off. So schoars have to couch their findings very carefully. The public, though, has a bit more of an appetite these days for views about China, and is willing to entertain a larger data set than previously. There’s a lot more direct contact as well, so some of the obvious B.S. being peddled can easily be caught with first hand impressions. But there is certainly a concerted effort to put forward a romanticized and triumphalist trajectory for the current Dynasty and its leaders, and some rabid apologists.

The most worrying trend seems to be a simple transposition error, where dissatisfaction with U.S. and N.A.T.O. misadventures, as well as frustration over Israel and its attendant problems, gets translated into support for a greater Imperial role for China, as it reflexively must be better this shit. Actually, China is under no such obligation.

Well, I’ve just skimmed through some of his series. It strikes me as unabashed apologia for the CCP, historicity at its finest. I don’t think reading it would be too helpful, either as an introduction to Chinese scholarship; nor as a series to stand along other Chinese scholarship. Mazaheri is very verbose, so a comprehensive review is kind of out of the question in the space available here. One can perhaps provide an example, and then make some general remarks on the genre.

By way of example, Mazaheri writes, “Their millennia-old meritocracy – the Civil Service Examination – made public service the highest good, was open to all, but tapped only a few.” This is a claim that both romanticizes Chinese bureaucratic functioning, and lauds the ineffable Chinese spirit. In reality, of course, it didn’t work that way. The exams relied on memorization, were open to corruption, and only the rich could afford the tutors necessary for preparation. It did provide for some screening among the elite, and some hedge against hereditary wealth being coupled with rank incompetence. Chris Hayes, the MSNBC correspondent, recently published a book, The Twilight of the Elites and the End of Meritocracy. The title is somewhat misleading. In it, though, he discusses how testing in the U.S. works, for awhile, until the elites learn how to game the system, and then those tests work to keep the wealthy entrenched with power and privilege. It’s one of those cases where a broader point, observable in the U.S., that cuts across cultures, can be helpful in understanding Chinese society.

There are many other cases, though, where trying to understand China from, say, an American perspective, fails, because that American perspective provides no clear analogies or guidance. Many fundamental assumptions are quite different, and these are often unexamined on the part of the would-be perceiver of China. If the investigator were authentic, in the Heideggerian sense, he or she would find him or herself on a groundless ground, genuinely bewildered. This is not usually the case. The bits that don’t add up are papered over with data and analogs from the perceiver’s own culture, in order to make out a picture that makes some sense. Whether you want to say this does violence to the culture being perceived, or is just plain wrong, is up to you. These errors, or inaccuracies, or gaps which can’t easily be filled, are sometimes innocuous, but they add up.

In the final calculus, they generally break into two types: Romanticized, or Disparaged. Mazaheri belongs to the first school; the second usually thinks those being observed aren’t as good as what we have back home. Apprehending the foreign culture, in this case China, both on its own terms, and in comparison to one’s native culture, results in a lot of questions, uncertainty, and tentative observations. To do it right, one should be steeped in one’s own culture, as well as familiar with China. One needs the knowledge of one’s own culture to be consciously aware of the differences, and how they got there.

The link to Brown’s work Mazaheri provided doesn’t work, so no, I haven’t taken a look at it. In general, Mazaheri’s characterization of Western scholarship on China is jejune. The concept of imperialistic histories which denigrate China’s past and patronizingly disparage its culture is a straw man. If anything, the opposite tends to be the case, as scholars generally pursue Chinese studies out of an elective affinity, and have the tendency to romanticize, as noted briefly above. There’s good scholarship and bad scholarship about China, as one would expect, and a great deal that falls in between — somewhat useful.

Owen Lattimore is indispensable, as he was the prominent American scholar for a good part of the last century. Sadly, he was outed as a Communist by the McCarren Committee and the McCarthy Hearings, lost his post at University and had to find work overseas at Leeds. As an American scholar, for several decades afterword, you couldn’t cite his work unless you wanted to risk losing your post or being attacked for being a communist. Of course, Lattimore was not a “communist”, but that should almost go without saying. The point was that for decades scholarship lost its leading light, and floundered predictably. Fairbank, one of Lattimore’s students, becomes prominent during this period.

The claim that Fairbank’s scholarship was the work of an Imperial lapdog justifying exploitation by the Western Empire should strike even the casual reader as cockeyed. During the time of Fairbank, China was largely inaccessible, and so scholars were left to fly by the seat of their pants, as it were. Sometimes they just re-typed press releases from the People’s Daily and said “this is what’s really going on in China.” I’ve seen some pretty egregious examples of this, often coupled with an ideological agenda. (Nothing too serious, mind you, mostly the kind of ideological stances that fashionably supplement a careerist trajectory.) You can still find some accurate accounting of what was going on in China during this period, like from the journalist Robert Elegant, who sifted through and tried to make sense of the tales people who’d left the Mainland told, in places like H.K. In any event, to claim that Fairbank wasn’t that good as a scholar is certainly supportable, but Mazaheri’s objections are not very sensitive.

I would put Jonathan Spence near the head of the pack in the generation which followed Fairbank, and he would make a good supplement to Lattimore. There are many Journals of Chinese Studies that one can read as well. Sampling some articles there would also be advisable.

Without going too far into it, there seems to be a movement afoot to harness dissatisfaction with U.S. and NATO foreign policy, one which proposes Chinese regional or global hegemony as either an acceptable or superior alternative to something termed as “The Western Empire” or a similar variant. Various arguments from history are constructed to bolster that suggestion. Of course, people are justifiably frustrated and angry with the Greater Middle East project, Russophobia, etc. Action on these fronts, and a peace movement, are desperately needed in domestic U.S. politics, and likewise in Europe. So it should come as no surprise that to these problems the clear, simple and wrong answer of China should have its adherents.

Well that’s an interesting take on my work, and plenty of good ideas – thanks.

I think that my “romanticising” is a strong word, because I think I stand on solid ground thanks to scholars like Brown. China…she looks pretty good! Maybe she’s not as pretty to you, but if you want to focus on the imperfections of the Chinese civil service test, I can’t stop you – but I don’t think there’s anything wrong about celebrating that such a wonderful practice existed when such practices were so very rare worldwide during that so very long Chinese era. For the record, I don’t think anyone believes – including myself – that the system functioned in a perfect manner…but its spirit is undeniable, and you cannot say that this ideal was never achieved, if not with utopian frequency.

I agree with much of what you are saying. People don’t become Chinese scholars without a genuine affinity and respect for Chinese culture, I would assume. However, I think you are assuming that a far-right, imperialist, neoliberal ideology does not overpower this sentimental affinity. My analysis of Fairbank is primarily a political one – which is an analysis open to all citizens – and not as a Chinese historian, which requires greater Chinese bonafides than I have.

And I think I proved this point: that Fairbank’s political ideology repeatedly, inevitably overcomes his sentimentality especially in Part 4, where I suggested a clear link between Mao’s famous swim and the I Ching, which he of the far greater Chinese bonafides only claimed bafflement. Fairbank’s obvious lack of familiarity with the fundamental religious text of China is, for a China scholar, proof of some sort of a lack of interest of the deeper spirit, and thus perhaps even a deeper regard for the deeper well-being, of the Chinese people; when combined with a clear neoliberal, pro-US imperial attitude…I think Fairbank was absolutely “justifying exploitation by the Western empire”, but I wouldn’t precede it with the phrase “Imperial lapdog” as you did, because I think that would be sensationalistic journalism on my part – perhaps you are negatively romanticising my “unabashed apologia” for China? I’m not going to lower myself into non-bashfulness, LOL….

So I think the “objections” of my political analysis of Fairbank’s ideology are indeed “sensitive”. I assume they are also nothing new among the Left: Fairbank is a guy who famously wrestled the microphone away from Howard Zinn in order to prevent him from persuading the American Historical Society from passing an anti-Vietnam war resolution, after all. To the Left, there is no doubt about Faribank’s right-wing, reactionary views, and one of the primary points of this series to drill as many more holes in that ignoble intellectual analysis as possible.

Finally, I am not a Chinese scholar and I certainly assume readers are aware of that. I am a daily hack journalist, and being “genuinely bewildered” is not the final stance a journalist can take – no matter where they fall on the Heideggerian scale: a critic condemns the bad, very strongly, and upholds the rare good stuff just as strongly.

What I do is just journalism, but that does not mean it is without its own merits and uses, and ones which cannot exist in scholarship – due to the different natures of the two mediums.

The good, new Chinese scholarship is found in Jeff J. Brown’s book, and I re-post the link here to it for you.

You seem to be quite informed on China and, while you will likely find it “apologia”, you will also find it to be filled with undeniable facts, the likes of which were either ignored, downplayed, never grasped or never searched for by the likes of Harvard’s Fairbank.

Everyone on the short list to get the job as “well paid propagandist for the imperialistic view of China” was an intelliigent and seemingly well-informed academic. They don’t put the letters PhD after a name if one doesn’t show at least some intelligence and documentation of years of reading and of passing of tests to prove that one is “well-informed”. But since everyone on the shortlist to get picked for the post of “well paid propagandist” has those characteristics, then it is no defense of any well-paid propagandist to then cite those characteristics.

Oh, opium exists. Amphetimenes exist. Marijuana exists. These things all exist and are specific things. But “drugs” is a propaganda term, and it doesn’t exist.

In the US, the term “drugs” is used to lump everything together and give everything the worst properties of any “drug”. Marijuana is a medicinally useful substance that does no physical harm to the user. Certainly much less than the “legal drugs” (that are not called “drugs”) like tobacco and alchohol. Yet, the propaganda term “drugs” is used to smear a marijuana smoker with all of the worst characteristics of an opium addict, an amphetimene addict, and a cocaine addict all rolled into one. Get caught with a joint, and you are an awful drug user and we have to throw you into jail for years and its all for your own good because “druggies” always are the worst of opium and cocaine addicts all rolled into one.

This is a fine article about “opium” and its history in oppressing China. But it is not an article about “drugs”.

Language matters. And when we adopt the language of our oppressors, they’ve already won half the battle.

What many don’t understand is this is exactly what the Philippines is living through now, with it all being brought in: whole product or ingredients, on U.S. military transport.

Duterte’s biggest challenge is the fact many of his own military have been subverted and are at the root of the supply chain. This an intentional compromise move, before it is issued out into the street.

The Philippines is embroiled, right now, in its very own Boxer Revolution.

This is another of the reasons for Duterte’s lean toward Russia and China, and America’s propaganda slant against him.

The Philippines are an excellent example of the “Chinese Drug Torture treatment”, right up there with Columbia.

Duterte is obviously excellent in so many ways, but drugs have forced him to do some less than ideal things. Yet parts of the Philippines are so screwed up with drugs that his harsh tactics have clear democratic support. When the People support non-democratic things…this is a conundrum. But it certainly shows how drugs are wielded as a perfect nation-destroying tactic in the hands of the West in the modern era.

Just like in China the West inspires fanatical religious cults (ISIL), creates regional warlords (corrupts their military), and does whatever they can to discredit the central authority.

Duterte is no Empress Dowager Cixi, thankfully, but neither is he a full-on leftist with total support for a socialist party. To me, from the historical view, he seems like the start of a successful leftist, anti-imperial movement in the Philippines, but not the end.

The “hop” drugs are, among other things, effective and necessary pain killers. I think 2,000 years of Chinese Medicine could have dealt with opium the way they always did, i.e. “just fine”, without a) the British dumping literal tons of illegal stuff on a new “black market”, b) obtaining Chinese silver reserves for nothing, and c) buying tea with that silver to obtain obscene profits in their own markets, again, for free. The Chinese were outraged by this, as well as by the missionaries (American, German, British) coming in to mess with their culture — thus the Boxer rebellion, a brave and sad mission if there ever was one.

At the same time (19th century), the U.S. was awash in all kinds of drugs, without any grave societal results. Laudanum and cocaine were available at any pharmacist, and no one noted any breakdown of society. Weak individuals? Yes, surely they suffered, but they were probably suffering in the first place. If anything, it’s booze that defines the American mentality.

The Old West in the US had plenty of laudanum around (indeed, in “heroic medicine” it was one of the few things that worked), and the Chinese who built our railroads (better than the anglos could) brought their poppies with them, they’re scattered around Bisbee in the spring to this day.

The courts of the day record no violent assaults for these Chinese male opium smokers, but lots of beatings by wayward American drunks who hated them for the crime of being Chinese. In comparison, the legal books are full of daily OK Corral scenarios by factions who were frequently drunk all day, six-guns in hand.

Booze corrupted the rule of law in the old west every single day. Chinese hop-smokers were blips on the horizon. Local historians don’t dispute this.

Black market drugs provide excellent ways to degrade societies, and most importantly to corrupt people, which is why the West has always loved using them as weapons. They create nice scapegoats, too.

It’s a matter of historical record that after the Chinese banned opium, missionaries magically appeared with heroin, strychnine and other “cures” that were far worse than the disease. To this day, I don’t know how you could accurately state how many people use drugs (legal or not — not to mention modern synthetic horrors like meth/fentany) in China, because most people won’t honestly answer the question.

In contrast, the Koran bans alcohol and tolerates/tolerated opium and hash, right? Food for thought. Maybe some drugs should be shunned by some cultures and vice-versa? They certainly ain’t “all created equal”, that’s for sure.

Certainly, there has never been a “magic bullet”. I also question the Chinese Communists’ repression of their own inventions (Chinese Medicine and martial arts) until the 1970’s.. You can’t imagine a traditional Chinese doctor taking an opium habitue’ outside and shooting him for his transgression.

Compassion for human suffering isn’t color blind, and perhaps the Chinese are a brilliant people but they have made stupid mistakes like everyone else.

It’s the criminals, syndicates, smugglers, black markets and organized crime (and the values/violence that go with them) that cause the real human tragedies, on grand scales. Also, the usual Imperial suspects using trade wars to degrade societies and rob them blind and humiliate them.

The guys quietly playing mahjong and smoking pipes in mansions (Dowager Empress) or hovels (now ghost towns) are tools in a game, and not the point. Your mileage may vary on this. I also think it’s the Chinese’s business (and every other country’s) how they deal with the problem. Thanks for another great article.

This is a helluva deep examination!
Kept me reading it twice or more sometimes to nearly comprehend.
Excellent work with some really fascinating findings. This chain of columns is far more exciting as I first thought!

Socialism defines the economic problem according to needs – finite, capitalism according to wants – infinite.

The best system is fair and equal at the appropriate places of observed experience. Equality is only truly necessary for everything that is included in the notion of ‘security’:

To the old right, ‘military defense’ – ye oldest social service in history!

To the newish left, everything an individual and/or society need to be secure from destitution and ruin according to a more compete analysis. Food, housing, health, education, defense must be socialist goods and services because each citizen must have equal starting conditions – from those humans that are external to them.

After that thoughmaybe (and this is 30% of GDP in wealthy countries like the UK), the rest can be a well regulated – to the principle of fairness – free market. Externalities must be internalised, systemic risk and moral hazard be fairly weighed, taxes must be fair and so flat (progression is neither ‘fair’ for any reasonable definition of competence, nor equal. A flat income/profit/capital-gains/inheritance tax should be set to equate to the % of government the aboves services provide. For some things the left extreme of UBI (food, maybe even health insurance) would be used, for the other state control is better (defense and education), (housing should be a partnership between state and business, but each citizen is allocated a house for when they finish education from birth (in the UK the 210k additional yearly demand is 2% of GDP)).

Perhaps though, (and these may just be negative externalities), add on an R&D and infrastructure spending %. The former to drive intellectual growth and productivity, the latter to keep the body alive. 40% of GDP is all it takes imo for efficient free-market socialism.

We had Rome with the bread doll on and off too though – and socialism bubbled up for West Eurasia from time to time, we just have ourselves fully mixed up in.. meta (beyond observed experience, not a-posteriori) physics (observed experience) for the last 2,500 years (thanks Plato). Luckily the Chinese had the Lao-Tzu, Confucius, and the Tathagata, so got both an accurate practical guide to social life, and an accurate description of observed experience!

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